NEW BUILDS: “Pantera Party” Round 3 – “War Hammer”

Aaaaaand here is the 3rd of 4 RRR Pantera GT5’s I’m adding to my sports car fleet! This one is bright orange, another color that may seem dated today but was not uncommon on the original real thing in the early 70s. I don’t recall ever seeing a real 80s era GT5 this color, but maybe there should be, because this tabletop version looks AWESOME!

For this one I elected to go with the Road Race Replicas wheels that were made for this car, opting for the black finish. While the previous 2 cars use low profile tires, I went with the full sized silicones for this one, which is what RRR recommends. Getting the chassis to fit with that configuration required shims at the front and the back, but my tiny little flattened washers did the trick again, and with just a wee bit of material removal via Dremel at the backs of the rear wheel arches and some abrasion of the bottom of the hood to clear the rear gear, everything lined up rub-free. With the full-sized tires I was able to use one of the super-long OS3 guide pins to take full advange of the deep slot on the Tomy AFX track, and I opted to use an orange one of out a batch of colored pins I bought a while ago.

For decoration, I bought a sheet of RRR decals as well, and opted to coat the trunk lid with a black applique. This looks good in concept but I was a little worried for a while, as the decal did not apply smoothly in spite of my care in laying it down and the use of setting solution. Fortunately it turned out fine once it fully dried, so I went over it with another RRR decal; here again I was able to cut out 2 individual numbers to make a number I have not yet used in my fleet, sparing me the indignation of a duplicate; the numbers canted at an angle the way they are is an inspiration from the commonly seen decals on the early and mid-‘70s Matchbox cars that defined my childhood. It may look a wee bit cheesy on a high-end sports car, but its also nostalgic, so I like it! And as with the first black car, I elected to leave the rear wing in place on this one.

Number 83 joins the sports car fleet bearing the name “War Hammer” which wasn’t really inspired by anything, it just sounds badass, so I went with it. It is piloted by Cain “THUNDERCAT” Thatcher, the son of an English diplomat and an American mother, who was born in an American military hospital in southern England and raised in military schools in several different nations around the world. In spite of his well-traveled and privileged upbringing, Thatcher has a reputation for being an aggressive and unforgiving driver on the track-not the gentleman race fans might be expecting. This may make him a driver that some spectators love to hate, and “Thundercat” seems just fine with that! Whether he can make good on the checks his demeanor writes remains to be seen, but this high-speed sports car will be hard to dismiss as mere “attitude!”